The Steel Remains lffh-1

by Richard K. Morgan

  Ringil closed his eyes, bit his lip until he tasted blood. Behind his curtained-off vision he saw it, the little gathered knots of men on the open ground down by the fish pools. Gray sketched figures, not enough light yet to color them in. And the two men between, the back-and-forth shunt of the duel. He heard its miserly metallic tones on the cool air, the clink and scrape of the court sword blades. Saw Darby drawn in, wrong-sided, feinted out. Riposte—the grating blade goes home. Bright crimson on the graying pastel palette of a day that Darby now won’t live to see.

  How long did it take Iscon Kaad to find the opening? Was Darby sober, had he made that much effort for the man that might have been his commander once?

  Ringil opened his eyes. Whatever the dwenda saw there, it didn’t like much. It swayed back a fraction.

  “Easy there.”

  “You knew. You fucking knew.”

  The dwenda nodded. “So did you. But you allowed yourself to forget.”

  Ringil wrenched his shirt straight. “You take me back. Back into the Aldrain marches, back before it happens. You—”

  “I’m afraid that can’t be done.”

  Through clenched teeth now. “You fucking take me back or—”

  “Or what?” Abruptly the dwenda’s arms whipped out. A grabbed handful of shirt, Ringil was jerked forward. A flat palm came at him like stone, slapped palm-first into his forehead, and suddenly he was on the floor, arms and legs robbed of anything resembling motive force. He flopped like a landed fish.

  The dwenda stood over him, arms folded.

  “Ageless Realm is a misnomer, you see,” it said somberly. “We can swim to the shallows, yes; with practice we can step into places where time slows to a crawl, slows almost to a stopping point, even dances around itself in spirals. It’s a matter of gradient relative to, well . . . never mind, it’s not something you’re equipped to understand. But however slow the crawl, we cannot actually stop time, and nor can we turn it back. What is done, cannot be undone. You will have to accept this as truth.”

  Ringil managed to get onto his front and force his knees under him. The room rocked and shifted around him, ice trickled down his limbs. He struggled for strength to push himself upright.

  He heard the dwenda sigh.

  “I was afraid it might come to this, Ringil Eskiath, but not so soon. We are none of us used to dealing with humans after so long. It’s a constant learning experience.”

  A booted foot came out and gently shoved him over on his side. Getting up faded to a distant dream. Ringil summoned what breath he could.

  “Who sent you?” he panted.

  “I am not sent, as you put it.” The dwenda knelt beside him. “But you do have your petitioners for my favor. There are those, it seems, who have no wish to see your grim but still rather beautiful face get slashed to ribbons in squabbles of petty honor.”

  He raised his hand again, palm-down, fingers lightly flexed. The gesture blocked light from Ringil’s eyes.

  “Wait, wait.”

  It took Ringil a moment to understand that the dwenda had obeyed. He could not read the sudden flurry of expression that chased across the unhuman face as it hung there. He thought he saw impatience, but impatience with whom it was hard to tell.

  “Well?”

  “Tell me.” Faintly. Ringil’s voice was almost emptied out, no stronger now than his limbs. “One thing, I need to know. It’s important.”

  The palm hovered. “Yes?”

  “What’s your name? We fucked all night, and I never asked.”

  Another hesitation, but finally it gave way to a curious smile. “Very well. You may call me Seethlaw, if that will serve.”

  “Oh, it will.” And now Ringil smiled as well. “It will.”

  Silence dripped between them. The dwenda’s palm stayed where it was.

  “You mind telling me why now you suddenly want to know my name?” it asked him finally.

  Ringil nodded weakly. Summoned some last fragments of breath and made his lips move.

  “Simple enough,” he whispered. “A cheap fuck doesn’t need to have a name. But I like to know what to call the men I’m going to kill.”

  Then the dwenda’s hand came down, touched his face, lifted gently off again. It seemed to lift consciousness away from him as well, like a delicate mask he’d been wearing and hadn’t noticed until now.

  The last thing he saw, as his own vision inked out, was the dwenda’s gaze as it raised its head to face the windows; the featureless empty eyes, now washed the color of blood by the rising sun.

  CHAPTER 24

  She went up to the palace at first light.

  Earlier would have invited arrest. While the lower echelons of palace life—the lighting of stoves, the cleaning of acres of marble flooring—got under way well before dawn, courtiers did not present themselves before breakfast. It was a rule of thumb with strong precedent. Two years ago, a provincial governor had made the mistake of bringing his concerns before Jhiral while the Emperor was still in bed. The occasion was a local revolt by resettled eastern nomads who’d jumped their reservation and reverted to banditry against the trade caravans, so there was some justification for the urgency, at least in the eyes of the governor’s special envoy, who rode up to the main gate at the head of a cavalry squad just as the sun was rising, and started yelling for the Emperor’s immediate attention.

  He got it. Jhiral had him thrown in jail for a week, along with his men, summary sanction for lack of respect before the imperial throne. Protests by senior advisers at court were in vain; the punishment stood. By the time the man was brought into the imperial presence and formally reprimanded, the revolt had more or less sputtered out, and the issue was moot. Proving, Jhiral observed drily, that there’d been nothing to get so worked up about in the first place. He took a rhetorical turn about the throne room to drive the point home, gesturing, pitching his voice for effect in the vaulted space. These are not the days of my father’s reign, my friends. Not the days of bitter warfare and privation, however much various of my father’s faithful friends and advisers in that struggle appear, inexplicably, to wish otherwise. Give it a rest, gentlemen. We are no longer at war, we face no implacable enemies or unhuman threats. There is no need for panic-stricken counsel and steely decision before the dawn comes up. Our Empire is prosperous and at peace. Our difficulties in these times are small and undramatic, admitting of equally small-scale solutions, which, though they may offer scant chance of wild glory, should nonetheless be effective. I, for one, welcome that change. It has been given to us to enjoy the legacy of all those who sacrificed for us—not to imitate their suffering. I am glad and grateful for that fact, as I am grateful for their sacrifices, and I would have thought that those of you who went through the horror of the war with my family would feel the same.

  Does anybody here not feel the same?

  Eloquent silence in the gathered ranks of the court. Somewhere off to the right, someone cleared his throat, then evidently thought better of speaking up. The sound turned magically into a cough. Jhiral heard it, knew what it meant, and smiled. He waited the echoes out, then clapped his hands.

  Excellent. I am, as ever, indebted to you all for your loyal support. Now—next order of business, and please tell me it’s a simple budget for city sewer repairs.

  The laughter was largely sycophantic, but Archeth had found her mouth stretching to echo it anyway. Privately, though she commiserated with some of her friends from the old guard, she felt there was a lot in what Jhiral said. She knew the provincial governor who’d sent the emissary, and didn’t hold him in much regard. Quite conceivably, he’d overreacted to a situation a shrewder man could have handled without rising from his desk. The revolt very likely could have been extinguished with relatively little fuss—could perhaps even have been avoided altogether, with a little intelligent foresight. You kept your finger on the pulse, you picked up the warning signals well before matters reached boiling point. You made a few examples, you made a few conces
sions, nine times out of ten the combination paid off. She’d done it herself enough times in the past, when Akal was still on the throne.

  Panic and overreaction—the late response of fools.

  Now, waiting in an antechamber for Jhiral to get out of bed, going over what the Helmsmen had told her, she couldn’t be sure if, sleepless and churned up and raw from the krin, she wasn’t giving in to a similar fool’s impulse herself.

  But:

  The dwenda are gone, Archeth. Thousands of years ago. They fled the parameters of this world when they couldn’t defeat us.

  Apparently, they’re back.

  One of the Helmsman’s unnerving silences. Then, severely:

  That’s really not funny. The dwenda are not something you joke about, daughter of Flaradnam.

  I’m not trying to be funny, Angfal. I’ve got better things to do with my time than come down here and tell you jokes.

  You certainly have. To start with—if you’re right and the dwenda really have returned, now, with the Kiriath gone—then you have graves to dig. About a hundred thousand ought to do it—you might want to get started ahead of time.

  “The Emperor will see you now.”

  She glanced up and saw the smirk on the chamberlain’s face. She supposed there weren’t a lot of courtiers receiving audience in Jhiral’s bedchamber. It begged a rather obvious question, and court gossip would doubtless provide a dozen different salacious answers by lunchtime.

  “You can wipe that fucking grin off your face,” she told him as she got up. “Or I’ll come back and cut it off for you.”

  The smirk vanished as if dragged downward off the man’s visage with a claw. He shrank from her as she passed. The krin made her glad.

  Better get ahold of that temper, Archidi. His radiance Jhiral Khimran II won’t bully as easily as his servants.

  She stepped through into a room that reeked of sex.

  The imperial bedchamber faced east by careful design and had floor-to-ceiling windows for the view. The sun flooded in, struck deep into the back of the room, and gilded what it touched—the drapes on the huge four-poster bed, the rumpled covers, and the three tousle-haired sleeping forms that lay amid them. Archeth registered the curves, made herself look carefully away.

  “Archeth! Good morning!” Jhiral was over by the wood-paneled partions on the far side of the room, wrapped in a long silk robe and picking at an extravagant spread of breakfast platters set out on three separate tables. He turned to face her, put a quail’s egg into his mouth and chewed vigorously. Lifted a wagging finger. “You know, when I said I’d hold you to your promise of rapid progress, I didn’t intend you to take it quite this hard. Sometime this afternoon would have been fine.”

  She bowed. “I must apologize for intruding on your rest so early, my lord, but—”

  Jhiral waved it away, still chewing. “No, it’s fine. Educational.” He swallowed and gestured at the breakfast spread. “Some of this stuff, it’s the first time I’ve ever tasted it when it’s still hot. So what’s the news? Did you have a good night in the sheets with my little gift?”

  “Your generosity . . . overwhelms me, my lord. I have not yet actually been to bed.”

  “What a pity.” Jhiral picked up an apple and bit into it. His eyes met hers across the top of the fruit, and the look in them was suddenly hard and predatory. He gouged the chunk of fruit loose with his teeth, chomped it down, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “I’d rather hoped we could compare notes, actually. Maybe even share young Ishgrim’s training between us.”

  “My lord, the reaction of the Helmsmen to my news about the dwenda incursion has been . . . disturbing.”

  “Yes. Well, you certainly look disturbed.” Jhiral stared down at the bitten apple for a moment, then tossed it back among the platters on the middle table. “Oh, very well then. You’d better come through.”

  He forced the slides of the partition apart at the join and walked through into the chamber beyond. There was a surfeit of sunlight in here as well, though diluted down and tinged in various colors by stained-glass panels set into the lower half of each window and depicting scenes of historic triumph from imperial history. Vibrant little smears of pink and blue lay across the wooden floor and paneled walls, and the green leather surface of a large writing desk in one corner. Armchairs were set up at the back of the room around another, low table covered to match the desk.

  “Sit.” Jhiral gestured her to a chair and took the one opposite. He covered a leonine yawn with one hand, sank back in the arms of the chair, put a slippered foot on the edge of the low table, and steepled his fingers. The robe split and gave her a narrow view of an impressive—if you liked that sort of thing—prick and balls. She couldn’t tell if it was deliberate. “So—disturbing. In what way?”

  Archeth hesitated. “I think the Helmsmen are afraid, my lord.”

  “Afraid.” Jhiral coughed up a short, uncertain laugh. He shifted in the chair and straightened his robe. “Come on. They don’t understand things like fear. You told me yourself, they aren’t anything like human. Anyway, suddenly you’re talking in plural here? How many Helmsmen have you actually spoken to?”

  “Two, my lord. Angfal, who is installed in the study in my home, and Kalaman in the fireship Toward the Candle of Vigil Maintained at the Kiriath Museum. Their attitudes are somewhat different, Kalaman is more pragmatic, less inclined to drama, but their basic responses are the same. Both give extensive warnings about what the dwenda are capable of; both are of the opinion that if these creatures are returning to this world, then the results will be catastrophic.”

  “Hmm.” Jhiral stroked at his chin. He seemed to have been doing some thinking of his own since the night before. “Catastrophic for whom, though? The way you’ve explained it, this is a northern thing, this dwenda mythology. Is it possible these creatures might confine their depredations to that part of the world?”

  “They came to Khangset, my lord.”

  “Yes, in response to either the prayers and idolatry of a northerner or the presence of a type of stone found only in the north.”

  “Found mostly in the north, my lord.” Holding down a tremor of alarm, because she could see where this was going. “Glirsht deposits are to be found in various parts of the Empire as well.”

  Jhiral gave her a shrewd look. “But you don’t really believe it’s the glirsht itself, do you, Archeth? If the dwenda use this stuff as a beaconing device, it would need to be shaped in some way, crafted to its purpose. The way our little friend from Khangset crafted her idol.”

  “I don’t believe th—”

  “Don’t interrupt your Emperor when he’s thinking aloud, Archeth. It’s rude.”

  She swallowed. “My apologies.”

  “Oh, accepted. Accepted.” A languid gesture. “Now look; our trade ships don’t just steer down the coast by any old fire they happen to see on a clifftop, any piece of brightly colored junk floating in the water that they might pass. They look for lighthouses and marker buoys. The dwenda are going to be the same—they’re going to be looking for a specific form of this rock, something shaped. Something prepared by their acolytes, by those who worship them.”

  Got to nip this in the bud, Archidi. He’ll do it, this little shit trying to fill his father’s boots, he’ll sign an order to get it done without a second thought, and you’ll watch the refugee columns form from horizon to horizon all over again . . .

  “The dwenda have been gone for several thousand years, my lord.” Voice as smooth as lack of sleep and krinzanz would let it get. “I think it’s safe to say that any acolytes they may once have had among humans are now dead. And this woman Elith certainly did not herself craft the idol she owns. She refers to it as an heirloom of her clan, and it certainly has the look of something many centuries old.”

  “But perhaps, Archeth,” the Emperor said softly, “Elith herself is many centuries old, as well. Did you think of that? Perhaps she’s been kept alive by the sorceries of her dwe
nda masters, gifted with eternal youth in return for her services. Perhaps she is a witch. Or even, a creature crafted from stone and given sorcerous life.”

  Archeth sat as if poised on the edge of the An-Monal crater. Lives spun past in her head, held in a balance whose mechanism she had only the slightest influence over. She saw Elith, screaming her lungs out on the rack or pincered apart, opened and probed with red-hot steel. Thousands like her, driven from their homes, no food or water beyond what they could carry, starving on the roads, brutalized and extorted of what little they still owned by the soldiery supposed to watch over them.

  She was accustomed to reading Jhiral’s face, but could make nothing of the bland expression he wore now.

  “Do you believe that, my lord?” she asked with knife-edge caution. “That this woman is a . . . a witch? Or some kind of golem even?”

  The Emperor studied his hands, gazed critically at his manicure for a few moments before he would meet Archeth’s eyes. He sighed.

  “Oh, I suppose not. Not really, no.”

  “Then—”

  A sudden jabbing finger. “But—and I told you before about interrupting me, God fuck it, Archeth—what I am beginning to think is that maybe my father’s policy of resettlement after the war was a mistake. It wouldn’t be the first mistake he made, would it? You remember that god-awful mess in Vanbyr. So, the way I see it, we’ve got tens of thousands of these people living among us, refusing to convert, most of them, turning their backs on the civilized benefits the Empire offers, going on with their idolatry and who knows what else besides. I don’t want to start sounding like that little twat Menkarak, but if permitting the kind of religious freedom we do is going to bring down some millennia-old curse on us all, well, then maybe we need to rethink our values. And maybe we don’t want these people inside our borders after all.”